On The Alameda near Monterey. (And what kind of town has streets that start with “the,” anyway? A few years back — a decade, maybe, but who’s counting? — this place had one of the most ostentatious light displays in Berkeley. The house was lit up, and so was the entire slope in front of it. Then it went dark for a few years. Change of ownership? Don’t know. But the last two or three years, maybe more, the lights have been back.

The bottom shot is from a house on The Arlington — again with the “the” — that has been a holiday spectacular for years now. The shot was an accident but give a lot better idea of the intensity of the light at the scene than any of my calculated shots.